This week the students traveled further North to Illeret on the East side of Lake Turkana! Saying goodbye to Mpala, the students embark on a new adventure as they continue their ecology course with Dr. Martins. With a new and vast environment to explore, the students have the opportunity to take in the beauty and [...]
This week was as busy as it was exciting for the students! Dr. Martins and the students collecting Anopheles mosquito larvae (Photo Credit: Lucia Nadal) They started their week with Dr. Duncan Kimuyu, a researcher at Mpala who is a part of the long term exclosure experiment. This experiment consists of several sections [...]
Jambo and welcome to the Spring 2019 TBI Origins Field School! My name is Lucia Nadal and I am the Resident Academic Director for this program. Together with our TA, Petra Peretin, I will be accompanying the students throughout the next ten weeks, making sure that they have an unforgettable learning experience. The students arrived [...]
Our last week at TBI was an eventful one, with a lot of things to finish up before we packed up and came back home. We took a trip to Central Island, learned a great deal about human evolution, visited an important paleontological site, and had a goat roast. After a restful day last Saturday, [...]
Welcome to part two of our Lomekwi journey! During the second week, we went on a day trip to Nariokotome, went swimming in the lake, and spent more time at the site. The last blog post left off on Saturday the 4thof August. On Sunday we had a rest day, and so decided to take [...]
Welcome back, it’s been a while! We have had a great time at the Lomekwi research and survey area over the past twelve days. In the first week, we learned a lot about the earliest stone tools, human evolution, and learned more about excavation. We spent time at the Lomekwi 3 archaeological site and excavated [...]
It’s been a productive week here at TBI! The last part of the archaeology module was all about learning how to excavate a site, and we were lucky enough to participate in an archaological dig with the Later Prehistory of West Turkana (LPWT) team. The site we’re working at, Nakwaperit 2, is thought to be [...]
Karibuni! Welcome to the TBI Summer Field School 2018! My name is Lucia Nadal and I am the Resident Academic Director of this year’s program. Together with the Summer Field School Director, Dr. Jason Lewis and our TA Lydia Myers, I’ll be accompanying the students throughout this program. Our three-module six-week field school will [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Natalie Lubaszka: On Monday June 18th we took a trip to see one of the hand pumps that was installed by a non-governmental organization. When we arrived there was a woman and a few children pumping out water. After speaking to them, with the help of our translator [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Winnie Wang: Monday, June 11th marked the first day of the second class in the Global Innovation program, EAS 310: Global Design Engineering Innovation. Professor Rodrigo Peña introduced the class and the corresponding assignments. The students’ main responsibility for EAS 310 is to outline a long-term project to [...]
Meet Margaret Shuoro! A teacher at Ileret's primary school. She became a teacher just a year ago but has already inspired many students. Spotlight Teacher: Margaret Shuoro Growing up Daasanach, Margaret experienced many difficulties. Battling through it all she became one of the few in her family to earn an education, going all [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Konnie Xu: Monday morning the team was energized for a week of finishing up their short-term projects, aimed at improving the daily lives of the Daasanach tangibly. This is to be completed within the two week period of the first course of the Global Innovation program, EAS 312: [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Sam van der Poel: On the morning of our first full day in Ileret, we were fortunate enough to witness a revered local gathering: a post-wedding ceremony. Typically the day after a marriage family members, friends, and neighbors gather to socialize and enjoy a goat. Men and women [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with student Emily Aviles: Wednesday night the Global Innovation crew went to bed early after dinner and a game of Uno to prepare for a game drive Thursday morning. While animal sightings are never certain on a game drive, the animals were cooperative and did not shy away from [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Professor Rodrigo Peña: The Global Innovation Field School is on the road again. As we arrived to the Nairobi Airport, on Tuesday May 22nd, unexpected rain with low temperature was waiting for us. Even though the commute was long (almost 24 hours) and made us all exhausted, the [...]
The students were very busy in our last two weeks in Kenya. The Archaeology module took us to many sites around Turkana where there have been important paleontological and archaeological finds or where there is exciting current research. The students walked the Turkana outcrops in search of bones, stone tools and pottery. Through their studies [...]
Photo: Esther Kadaga Our journey through the Archaeology module is coming to an end. We had a few site visits this week and one of the activities the students got to do was archaeological surveys. Archaeological surveys are useful in helping archaeologists to identify where best to excavate. The field team scans the [...]
Stone tools which were a vital technological invention of early humans, enabling them to do things like butchering. Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies were collectively prevalent for millions of years; now it was time for our modern day students to try their hand at reliving their ancient ancestors' ways of life. On Monday Dr. [...]
On Friday the field school said goodbye to our camp at Ileret where we've lived for the past 7 weeks and got on the TBI plane to fly over the "Jade Sea" (Lake Turkana) to our new home, the Turkwel campus.
We are into the last week of the Human Origins module. As the students have come to find out, the phylogenetic tree of human ancestry is more bushy than expected.